Monday, January 2, 2017

2016 Year in Review

First off, Happy New Year!

I don't know about you, but to me, 2016 did not just fly by like some previous years. It seemed to drag on and on and on. I've heard similar sentiment from others, and I can't put my finger on it. Perhaps it was the prolonged political season, perhaps just the series of events, perhaps because it was my first year in quite a while to not be a dog owner. Either way, it was a year, and now it is over.

We lost a lot of pop culture icons this year, too, from David Bowie and Prince to Leonard Cohen and George Michael to, most recently, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. Their loss will have a lasting impact on our culture at large, but the bodies of work they left behind leave a far larger mark.

So how did I do in 2016 versus 2015? Here's some thoughts from a year in review.

Kept Blogging

At times I thought I might stop, but I managed to keep up the blog now, entering into its third year. There were some posts that were less than great, but others that I really enjoyed writing and I hope that you enjoyed reading. If you are interested, my most popular post of the year was How to Make Long Range Plans the Easy Way which got more than double the normal number of readership I generally see.

Increased Facebook Engagement

I don't have a ton of folks that keep in touch on my Facebook page (just over 70), but if you are a Facebook type of person, you can jump over there and Like it for me. That will keep my posts in your news feed so you can stay updated.

Blew Up Twitter

I went from 1864 Twitter followers last year to 3321. This year I want to top 5000 and start working on more engagement with them. If you don't follow me on Twitter, you should. I post more than just articles, sharing thoughts on beer and football as well. I got over 13.9K tweet impressions in December, a little down from last year, but then again, I'm writing this just a little before the end of the year, so there's still time to catch up.

Started a Book

The company I work for went through quite a bit of change and transformation this year, which became a natural topic for me to write a book about. I'm currently a couple of chapters in, but it is fully outlined and fleshed out.

Wrote Some Stuff

I only wrote 34 blog posts in 2016, down a bit as I went to a "generally once a week" formula and trailing off towards the end of the year. But I also wrote over 5000 words to start the book, generated a white paper on a digital transformation case study, and created a Twitter marketing analysis guide and another workbook that I hope to make available to you guys soon, if you are interested.

Did Some Speaking

I did not line up the huge paid stadium speaking tour that I would have loved, but I did do some corporate speaking to well over 600 people this year, and lined up a speaking gig in January talking about IT Transformation, which ties in with the book I am working on. Should be fun.

I have plans for 2017. Not sure if it will be better or worse than 2016 (let's hope better and then work to make it so where we can). Here are some things that I hope to get done this year.

Give the site a facelift. I know it won't change much, but I have a site redesign that tweaks the look a little bit.

Get some of my analysis out to you guys. I have two things I would love to give you, I just have to put the finishing touches on them. I would expect one comes out earlier in the year, and the other maybe towards the end.

Finish the book and start on the next. As it stands I am only about 7 or 8% done with the first draft, but I hope to finish this one and get cranking on the next one soon.

Look into creating a mini-course. I have an idea based on some of the different marketing tracking that I have been doing online, but it still requires actual course creation.